Pore Scale Mass and Heat Transfer in Unsaturated Porous Media
X.F. Peng, Y. Zhang, D. Wu and B.X. Wang
A series of experimental and theoretical investigations was conducted to understand moisture and heat transfer in different unsaturated porous media at pore scale level with the consideration of phase change, including water wetting of a dry wood, heat and mass transfer in sand packed beds with locally heating, boiling phenomena in bead-packed porous structures, vapor condensation and vapor/liquid transport in unsaturated materials, and drying of porous media containing concentrated solutions. A number of new phenomena were observed from the experiments, and important transport characteristics of these phenomena were discussed from theoretical investigations. Special attention was paid to the effects of pore structure, phase change interface, salt precipitation from solution, and some theoretical descriptions and explanations were developed to explore fundamentals of the phenomena.
Keywords: Porous medium, non-saturation, pore scale, transport phenomena, phase change, transport properties.